Piece of crap. Screw you game. You freaking suck. Suck this ball lick game. Sega had a number of memorable arcade titles, and E-Swat seems to be a favorite of many a young adult who remembers having a go at it in an aracde, bowling alley or whatever. What better idea could there be than porting this baby to the Master System, right? Suck that ball lick statement and shove it.

Gameplay

E-Swat is a basic platformer. You're part of a police force that's looking to eliminate the wave of crime in the city. Easy enough, and, as expected, there are plenty of enemies to kill and some cool bosses (in terms of concept, anyway). You can pick up power-ups and such, eventually getting your E-Swat robot-suit, which is pretty cool. There is a difficulty option that changes little other than the number of enemies, but it's still kind of nice to up the challenge, should I ever feel the need, which I won't. Why?

First off, see below for more detail, but this game looks freaking terrible. The atmosphere is dreadful and this makes what fun is here seem all the worse. Enemies come incessantly at you, but the sad programming allows you to continue moving, dodging bullets, and waiting to kill the three guys behind you until the boss segement. So, ummmm, let me get this straight, the more I kill, the more that appear? So, these criminals, they have the ability to regenerate and spawn anew? Feck it, I just won't shoot them and save these three losers until the end of the stage. Who cares about points? That's pretty much what you'll do.

You can shoot them if you feel the need, and it's certainly not difficult, just annoying. It's generally better to save your bullets for the bosses, and this goes for the power-ups as well. Save them, and you can pretty much destroy every boss without ever getting hit. Lame. Add to this the fact that you're nearly unstoppable when you get the robot suit, and you have a strange difficulty curve. The first level is actually the most difficult, but the game gets ball lick easier as you go farther and farther. The last boss even has the same pattern as the first. Seriously? At least the ending is sort-of cool.

Graphics

E-Swat is weakest in this area. It looks horrible. If you're familiar with the original or the Genesis/Mega Drive version, you'll almost be shocked at how much this does not look like E-Swat. The main character looks like he's limping and is so poorly designed I'd swear you could pull it off on a 2600 and it would probably look better. The colors are pretty drab in general, which is weird, and the only real redeeming feature you're going to find is the ending. That's probably the only part of the game they seem to have spent any time on, I guess because they were happy to finish the damn thing and wanted to reward themselves for it.

Sound & Music

To add insult to ball lick, E-Swat's music is freaking god awful. Just, wow, just terrible. We're talking totally out of place here. It opens with this weird, happy song that seems more suited to perhaps Alex Kidd in Shinobi World (best comparison I can think of right now) and doesn't really get any better from there (especially during boss fights). Some of the sound effects are cool, but most are bottom-rung, bottom-of-the-barrel, well-below-the-SMS'-capabilities bad. I would have hated myself for making this one.

Controls

The controls are least very responsive. It's easy to move, quickly duck, shoot and repeat. No problems here, this is probably the only good thing about E-Swat. He also moves quite smoothly in the ducking position, and the D-Pad pulls it off nicely. At least this part is good.

Replay Value

Scores

What? Replay? Ha, no. This game is just too freaking boring and terrible for me to want to even bother. Just look at the cover art for the damn thing. What, did they get some sort-of Chinese, backwater company known for making unlicensed and pirated NES games to do this one? What in the world am I supposed to be looking at there? Why is he wearing sunglasses and what the hell is he shooting with? Sometimes I wonder. A little off subject there, suffice to say it's doubtful you'll play this again. The difficulty setting is sort-of cool in consideration of everything else, but when you discover that you get the same ending anyway you wish you could take it back.

Conclusion

E-Swat is a sad example of a platformer for the Master System. I was really disappointed in this one. I used to love Robocop for the NES, in spite of its flaws, and I was hoping this title would have been an equivalent (yes I know there are Robocop games for the SMS, but I mean in America). I was totally disappointed and bummed out in the end. This game is a disgrace.